
OLD RED SANDSTONE OF WESTERN EUROPE. 443 
be observed to the east, that the fish-bearing nodules, shales, and clays 
are overlaid by a thick series of reddish and grey flagstones and shales. 
These beds are well exposed in the stream above the farm of Morayston. 
They at once reminded me of portions of the Caithness flagstones about 
Berriedale. In some of the strata fish remains occur abundantly ; Mr Horne 
and another Geological Survey colleague, Mr Linn, have recently obtained 
some fine large bucklers of Asterolepis Asmusii—a form which, so far as I 
am aware, has not been previously observed in this region, if indeed it has 
ever been actually found on the south side of the Moray Firth. 
Much higher up the valley of the Nairn the nodular fish-bed has re- 
cently been detected near Nairnside House, by Mr Wattace, who has 
obtained numerous fragmentary specimens of the large Thurso Dzpterus (D, 
macrolepidotus)—the first time, so far as I am aware, that this fish has been 
met with on the southern shores of the Moray Firth. As far back as 1827 
the occurrence of ichthyolitic nodules at Inches, 3 miles to the south-east 
of Inverness, was brought to the notice of S—eDGwick and Murcuison.* At 
present the work of the Geological Survey is being prosecuted in this region 
by Mr Joun Horne, who has brought to my notice the very fine section 
of the lower portion of the Old Red Sandstone in the ravines of the Nairn, 
near Daviot, where the flaggy characters of many of the strata at once recall 
the true flagstone groups of Caithness. 

5. Loch Ness to Sutherlandshire.—Beyond these limits no further paleeonto- 
logical evidence has yet been found to guide us in unravelling the broken series 
of conglomerates and sandstones which stretch up Loch Ness. That region 
has still to be worked out. On the west side of Loch Ness good sections 
are to be seen of the dull red sandstones and conglomerates, which rise 
into the huge dome-shaped mass of Mealfour Vounie (2284 feet). They 
are much broken and hardened—a result, doubtless, of the movements which 
from a very early period have taken place along the line of the Great Glen. 
On both sides of Glen Urquhart the unconformable position of the con- 
glomerate upon the schistose rocks is well exposed. At the same time, the 
immense interval which must have separated the extrusion of the north 
Highland granites from the date of these conglomerates is made strikingly 
apparent. The conglomerates (or in many cases breccias, for the stones are 
often more angular than rounded) consist largely of fragments of granite, 
quartz-porphyry, and other intrusive rocks of the Highland series, mixed with 
pieces of the various gneisses and schists. The granitic materials are particularly 
abundant in the conglomerates of the rounded hills which guard the mouth of 
Glen Urquhart. Hardly any trace of bedding can be made out, and though 
* See their Memoir, “Trans, Geol. Soc,” 2d ser, iii. 147, 
